Long
have I longed to see your face revealed, the veil pulled aside, the
splendid & hungry features no longer confined by senseless matter.And long have I longed to hear the music of your harp.When the Engines of Desire are charged, there is a sound within
these walls like many mouths thirsting, like many illuminated foreheads
pressed & praising, like endless flocks of birds waiting still &
silent for that one word that will at once liberate & set them to
wing.

Often,
before dawn, I search for you by the waves of the sea.Only I will find your sandals & your books – written as they
are in that strange language – but you are gone.

Many
a night, I can be found ranting in your forests, delirious & thirsty,
decorating my face & my body with these ashes, holding my hands
to the sky.Strapped to my back
is a beast, his eyes roll wildly & he groans & sings dedications
to your unspoken name.But you
are gone.

I
didn’t come here to win “first place” in the pageant.I didn’t come to be decorated with oils &
gold, nor to be carried through the plaka on the shoulders of
silent slaves.The “celebrity’s
life” is no temptation – it represents little more than a plague or
a disorder of the nervous system – piles of manure, for my money.

But
drunk on the promise of your perfume, I am confirmed in wilderness.I long to see your face no longer obscured, and your wild hands
arranging the orbits.Your lips alone will bring down the thirsty
armies bivouacked on my own.Your
song alone – smeared upon my forehead and my mouth – will bring forth
gratitude.

I
came to paint these seminal mysteries on your walls.I came to hear your harp.It is for this that I move, blind & intoxicated,
through these endless abandoned villages – this holy, unfortunate beast
bound unto my back.

A Madman Among
Jackals

Left
howling on the deck

Of
this pirate’s ship, chains about my ankles –

Still
the air smells of lavender & roses.

Wandering,
a madman among jackals

In
the market, wounds in my hands & feet –

Yet
my lips taste of the ginger & honey & milk of outrageous love.

Often
I stumble about like a hurricane,

Toppling
houses, damning strangers & breaking old treaties –

Yet
one glimpse of your silken mane returns me to stillness.

How
is it so?

Every
hand I touch bleeds light into the atmosphere,

Is
electric with the weeping of your song –

I
see you leaping like flames from those fingertips!

And
once again, I am gentle & warm,

My
ears hear the music & whispered voices of tall cedars,

And
my mouth is filled with holy milk.

The
Avalanche Knows You

The
avalanche is coming down on every culture.The avalanche pours forth from the mouth of
the sea.The avalanche is coming
down around your shoulders.The
avalanche is coming down upon the broken dream.You can’t undress it. You can’t stroke it.You can’t bring it home or caress it with your will.The avalanche is talking to your daughter.The avalanche is wrecking your peaceful sleep.The avalanche knows you.

The
avalanche disturbs your little shoes in the closet.The avalanche makes your dog cower & wince
& glance over his shoulder.The
avalanche causes an illness to sing in the petticoats, causes the madman
to burn the minister’s house, causes a long, dark train to burn all
night and then explode.The
avalanche wills it.The avalanche
wills it so.

The
avalanche is coming down on the new religion.The avalanche is coming down on the dull credo, on the old sanctimony,
on the dis-eased mission.The
avalanche is whispering at the nape of your neck, speaking the epistles
you do not wish to hear.The avalanche is gunning down your neighbors.The avalanche is in your garage screwing with your recommended
tire pressure.You can’t tame it with your arguments.You can’t make it go home.You
can’t label it “tyranny” and be done with it.You can’t say, “Wait a minute, I’m on the phone”.

The
avalanche knows you.

The
avalanche is waiting for you after the dance.The avalanche is waiting for you at the little
ceremony.The avalanche is dressed
in patent leather shoes, a white corsage.The avalanche is coming down on your Chevy.The avalanche is coming down on your trombone
& your green velvet coat.The
avalanche is biting the hand that feeds you.The avalanche is coming down across the dashboard.The avalanche is refusing to grant you redemption, saying, “I’m
not through with you yet”.The avalanche won’t talk to you about mercy
or offer you a glass of wine.The
avalanche will crush you first and then it won’t marry you in the morning.

Listen,
do you hear that?Like branches breaking…

A Palace For
Your Longing

Let
my lips be a palace for your longing

Let
your desire cry out & seek to be impaled in this place.

Let
the song of this agony – delirious & sweet –

Sing
you to the very edge of this cliff.

Let
your holy body –

Taut,
every luminous nerve charged –

Hover
over that edge,

That
this tongue

Might
bestow the Blessing

On
thee.

Why Are You Here?

If
you believe that you came here to amass possessions,

Understand
that this belief is ignorance.

You
will leave with empty hands.

If
you think that you are here to claim power,

To
control others,

Think
again, you will leave alone, shunned,

All
eyes turned from you.

The
question is: Where do you end & I begin?

Simply,
what is offered to one is offered to all.

Bread,
in any language – called by any name – is still bread.

And
know this: Any fool can sleep his life away.

Look!
They are bringing pajamas & covers of goose down even now!

But
it takes great courage to open one’s eyes.

The
World is my home, all Humanity my family.

Open

There
are those who say the cup is half empty,

Others
– that it is half full.

But
look everywhere

And
you will see the cup!

It’s
entirely full.

It
lacks nothing.

Open
your mouth & drink.

From
The Axe & The Lute,

(Published
1998 by Chameleon Press)

Upon
The Altar

I
was waiting like a lamb for the Hand of Mercy, but the Hand of Mercy
did not come.Or, more likely,
it was there where I knelt beside the Interstate, but it was not revealed
to me.Those assassins stepped
forward to state their case, their metallic sunglasses gleaming.Those bullets were true but did not penetrate
to my chest, protected as it was by the brown paper bag of dark stars
that I wear like a talisman beneath my shirt.Each star carries with it a single sigh procured from your gentle,
white throat.

In
another distant life, when once I was king – laboring over pearled harps
& luminous beings, moving disparate in disguise through the slave
markets, singing couplets & praises over abandoned bones, speaking
in un-bargained for tongues – I was led down to the waters to speak
your name.Your form appeared,
bathing among the rushes, dark thighs shining like wet glass.You were sent forth to disturb my peace, according to God’s plan.The sighs of your lips lay strewn about those rushes like beads
of dew, I remember…

Now
I do my penance.I make my rounds.I have met the Pharaoh and am not sore impressed, not by his
actions nor his armies, nor his magicians nor his greed.Ordinarily, when one of his stature speaks, the bazaar grows
still & every forehead touches the dust.But for my part, if I were him, I wouldn’t hesitate to empty
the coffers.All the grains in his endless warehouses are forfeit.I would give it all to bathe in the
sound of even one sigh loosed from your mouth, even one sigh…

Take
me in your hands, O ecstatic dove.

Make
me come to the song upon your lips.

Make
me weep upon the altar of that song.

Here
In My Vest Pocket

Here
in my vest pocket is a small, clear vial, aqua in color, where the agony
goes & the dolorous locks of someone’s hair & the bird’s small
claws & thick rivulets of Catholic blood & numerous whirling
worlds of discontent & the kinds of energy I so would like to forget.

Often
I act as if the vial is not there or that it belongs wholly to someone
else.But it comes back to me,
as when I am pushing that black wheelbarrow with its opulent wheel up
an innocent hill & I can hear the vial clicking against my buttons,
or when the yellow moon is torn down out of the sky moaning, confessing,
or when I am too willing to allow my life to drain out of me.

Owl
feathers in my mouth, my hands in the cages of some secret police, eyes
bound up under endless layers of white lace, the crooning thick syrup
of popular song plugging up my ears, my apartments crowded with complaints,
thick & dull – like disinterested oxen.How does one chew through this kind of coarse,
bitter gruel?How does one eat
nails?

There
is momentary refuge in the praise of others.They tell me how much I know & how rich
& pleasing the fruit that I bring to their tables.But I don’t know – sometimes I go to that same
well.Looks pretty dry to me.

Sometimes
I seek refuge in women.Or in conversation.Or in
conversation with women but I am cut off in the alley, on the way, by
children with small wooden boxes, dead ravens, dead pearls.

So
I move through the amphitheatre among the empty seats like a ghost clothed
in thick ocean water.I clutch
the small glass vial to my throat & when I move to sing, piano keys
– black & white – cascade from my lips breaking on the ground, crashing,
sounding much like tympani & thunder & the round, deep bellowing
of monks & old planets rolling down the stairs.Books – immense & dusty – fall from the
bandaged palms of my hands like blood from a Christ & I trample
down the brown pages & the broken keys & move off toward the
sea.

Taking
the vial to my lips I drink, come what may, & sit down beside a
red boat, my shoulder leaning against its painted wood.Dark fishermen, their sleeves rolled up, are
making ready.A black-haired
youth labors over his nets, & a small, cloven-hoofed animal – kicking
& bleating – dances on the sand in the dim light of morning.

Sighing
a sigh that covers the world like vast, formidable clouds, I alone see
the angel dancing with that goat.

The Name

Pears
still ripen.

Rain
still falls down.

I
still taste your name

In
every breath I take.

In The Deep Pastures

(For
Panna and Nora)

My
back against a low stone wall

I
wait beneath a straw hat

Near
the monastery

With
my hole of a mouth.

Pray
that the Temple will crack open

And
I will be pierced.

Pray
that someone will move

Beneath
the brilliant olive trees

And
moisten my lips.

Pray,
and seek, and pray yet again.

But
when the shadows still this land

Like
monastery wine spilled by moon

I
too will be still, and sleep, in the deep pastures

Beside
sleek, golden,

Deer-like
creatures,

A
tongue murmuring in each ear.

The
Longing

A
wound deep in my leg – the bone perhaps is broken.The kerchief of a true sister is bloodied &
tightly knotted at the knee.I
lie in the corner of a shelled building – once it was a church - &
I have been here since early morning.Night assails these ruins & through the window, by torchlight,
I can see their warning – a small goat sacrificed & dripping from
the roof beams.I dig my dagger into the dirt floor.

If
I am so unlucky in a few days I will stand before their judges in my
grandfather’s black suit in some terrible courtroom, the fan circling
slowly.I will tell them, “I
have not asked for so much – a woman to walk with, some songs to sing”.

The
tin hearts with their swords, the tin arms, the prayer medals &
the scapulario all tremble among the impotent white candles.There is more weeping outside.Only yesterday this place was breathing with
long-haired Zapotec women, golden squashes, red & green chilis,
serranos, glorious melons, old priests.Now, tonight, shots ring out like demented prophets in the zocalo.I hear the Longing in the songs of the martyrs.The Longing enters the tabernacle & seizes me by the lapels.

I
am tempted to stall for time, to claim that I am “not ready”.But there in the corner near the sepulcher is the clear form
of a disinterested deity, nine hearts of chrome revolving around her
immaculate wide-eyed gaze, her rouged lips twisted into a grotesque
& brilliant smile.I do
not ask for water.I know better
than to ask for Light.

There
is a sound like castanets.There is a religion deeper than poison, sweeter than the electric
bluebird songs in the rafters of this church.There is a nine-hearted deity, delirious & comforting, flashing,
obscenely grinning, bestowing on me the promise, consecrating my form
to the Only Gift.I do not ask
for water.I know better than to ask for Light.

She
says, “It doesn’t end here”.She says, “There is no danger”.

On
her exquisite recommendation, I remove the tourniquet & hobble out
into the harmless night where a thousand bullets move through my body,
my form, like small tongues moving through milk.

From
The One Who Has No Name (1980-89)

(Audio
Recording of 33 spoken poems, released 1990)

Golden Ring

Only
once was this golden ring removed from my ear.It was in sleep & it disconnected itself & fell onto
the pillow of her bed.I was nervous in those days & my sleep
was nervous too.Dreams were
full of abandonment & scorn.That
morning when we awoke & found the ring golden & alone, I asked
if she would return it to the lobe of my ear & she refused.A few days later we parted ways, I believe for that Long Eternity.

And
now, months later on my bed in Queens where I sleep alone, the ring
once again has fallen from my ear.It lies on the pillow bent from the huge weight
of sleep.I put it in my mouth
& it crumbles.I reach inside
for the small gold pieces & I pull them out.I reach inside my mouth & I pull out branding irons &
chains, false idols & a Maltese cross, goblets & chalices, knives
with their sheathes, old arrows, be-jeweled Arabian swords, and a coat
of chain mail.I reach down into my throat & I pull out
auto parts & cooking pots, kettles & copper spears of war, silver
tea sets & the polished armor of a long dead king.From my mouth I produce the protective shoes of Achilles, and
the temple bells of Kyoto, and the hull of a sunken battleship.All this elemental iron & so much more – the stone walls of
Carthage, water from the Ganges, the hands of a woman who loved me,
& the matted dressing gown of some martyred woman saint.From my mouth I pull the beating heart of a thief & the medicine
shield of a Navajo priest, the counting stones of a desert nomad &
the beasts & killers & monsters & angels & mouths &
tongues & fingers & shoulders & teeth & nails &
politics & sins & dogs & desires & ambitions & all
the holy & hideous trappings & blessings of the World.

I
scatter these things about the room & I say nothing.

I Found Myself In
A Village

I
found myself in a village I had not seen before.

Barefoot
strangers walked around in the darkness,

Their
feet lacerated on shards of glass

They
themselves had scattered on the path

In
the light of the previous morning.

The
grandfathers sang around old café tables

But
where lips moved no sound was heard

And
long-haired women by moonlight

Brought
babies to the well…

I
asked for something I might recognize –

A
bit of language, or some painted thing,

Like
an animal or bird.

But
I was led away from satisfaction

And
given a shirt to wear –

One
woven from the hair of horses

And
old women raised in the wild.

I
am blessed in this way –

Clothed
in the hair of horses

And
old women raised in the wild.

Snake

Go
to the garden expecting a snake

And
you will find one.

Where
I live the village chief did this.

Now
he wears an amulet

And
carries a big gun,

His
knees shake,

He
prays day & night

And
lives in constant fear.

He
has pictures of snakes everywhere

And
tells the people in the village to look out!

He
locks all the women in a room without holes.

He
says, “Don’t Sleep!”

And
“Don’t Walk on the Ground!”

He
made an enemy of the snake

And
now there are snakes all over the world.

Do I Want to be a
Rock Star?

Do
I want to be a Rock Star?

Or
maybe a man with many possessions,

Bright
machines pulsing in his house?

Isn’t
that like wanting

Syphilis
or senility? Spinal meningitis?

Listen,
I laid down on a dark hillside

And
giant clouds laid down on me

And
I can’t forget that now.

A
large bird with strong legs & red wings

Entered
my home & said things in my ears

And
I can’t forget that now.

And
an ether woman, the color of lilies,

Came
across the fields & entered me

&
I was returned to that place where I am reminded

that
I am an animal!

An
animal who knows that the Most Secret Thing

Dwells
inside & will outlive the stars…

Never
Forget!

The Secret

Go
inside & wrap the Secret around you like a lover.Entwined this way, with these limbs, one can dwell in Lethargy
with an endless, speechless passion.

Days
might pass un-noticed & in that time barely the hand moves – the
sun rises in its palm & the fingers are farmer’s plows stroking
deep furrows in the long hair of the One Inside.

Cowherds
might pass the simple hut with their animals, dust rises & falls,
bells are heard on the animal’s necks and the Cowherds hear also the
song that comes almost as if from dream sleep – the song of the One
Inside.

Ants
might move determinedly across the cracked earth dragging a broken crab
claw down into their home – five ants at the labor of carrying burden
& five ants digging tirelessly around them to enlarge the community’s
tunnel to take in the claw.And all this beneath the hut, beneath the farmer’s
plow and the Cowherd’s feet,

beneath
the singing breath of the One you have found Inside.

The Edge of a Snowy
Place

You
hang so lightly on a fine saliva thread

Dangling
over the edge of a snowy place –

Your
belly white & open to me.

How
many times have we praised beauty together in this way?

How
many times have we begged the final note of the song,

Only
so that we might sing again?

My
fingers strumming the lute,

The
warmth of your breath as you descend to embrace the flute,

Rises
& billows,

And
urges us on to the valley of our longing.

O
Woman,

What
we seek is below & before us.

When
shall we burst & flood that white valley

With
a thousand snowy doves?

That Which You
Wish to Taste

If
you try, using the eyes of ministers, scientists & priests,

To
see what is out there,

You
may find those eyes are sealed with a sickness.

And
if you feel about in the dark

Using
the hands of another

You’re
liable to miss the warning & lose your life.

Don’t
wear out your shoes running after God

And
don’t wear out your mouth trying to make up a name for him.

That
which you wish to taste

Is
already there, on your tongue.

From
Vicious Information

(Published
1978 by Springhouse Press)

Note:
I was a kid when these poems were collected (you’ll notice traditional
modern American angst as well as a traditional youthful allergy to capitalization
& punctuation), & many of them probably should not have seen
the light of day, but there are a few good moments.I’ve included three here for the sake of catalogue.I am forever indebted to the poet Gary Moore for encouraging
the good moments & quietly ignoring the rest.-JT